Posts Tagged ‘for sale’

Midnight Blue Sky

Monday, March 2nd, 2020

a watercolor painting on a metallic photo print of a blue moon, blue-black sky with copper stars, and a flying crow, by Amy Crook

Midnight Blue Sky, 5″x5″ inkjet and watercolor on metallic photo paper

Thanks to weird color results and other misprint issues, these prints won’t be making it into my Etsy shop. Instead, I gave away the best ones and used the remaining three for experimentation!

This one uses metallic blue and copper watercolor to change the sky to a swirling vortex, to turn the stars into an eerie presence, and make the crow’s eye shine balefully out at the viewer.

For anyone who likes corvids and shiny things, this is a great little remix of one of my best recent works.

Midnight Blue Sky, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see the copper shine of this crow’s altered eye. Below, it’s framed and waiting for the right home to fly to.

Midnight Blue Sky, framed art by Amy Crook

Midnight Blue Sky, framed art by Amy Crook

Categories: Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Series and Books
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Growth 13

Friday, November 8th, 2019

an abstract watercolor in oranges and golds by Amy Crook

Growth 13, 8″x8″ watercolor on paper

A bright and cheerful change of pace brings us the almost-too-saturated colors of this newest Growth painting.

It owes a lot of its aesthetic to another series, Concentric, but the final image still follows the reaching-out visual language of its quieter predecessors. There’s a sense of light, of motion through space that only a few of its fellow pieces reflect.

The warmth suggests combustion, sparks from a fire, from a meteorite falling and burning on its way to earth. And yet, there’s something solid about the droplets raining down and radiating away from it, so perhaps it will leave an impression after all.

Growth 13, detail, by Amy Crook

Growth 13, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see the shine and texture of the golden beads of paint floating atop the orange glow. Below, this bright painting is framed in black to set off its gorgeous colors.

Growth 13, framed art by Amy Crook

Growth 13, framed art by Amy Crook

Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Series and Books
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Fire Season

Wednesday, November 6th, 2019

an ink painting of stark ruins poking up against an orange sky, wreathed in smoke, by Amy Crook

Fire Season, 6″x4″ ink on paper

It’s fire season here in California, and it’s been a month for ruins all around.

The beautiful golden-peach glow of the smoldering sky is hard to capture on a monitor, but the inks give a magnificently clear color in person. The charcoal grey of ink wash swoops in fluid lines to suggest some kind of burnt-out ruins, close or distant, large or small.

Birds circle above and around, giving them a sense of scale — unless it’s the birds themselves that are distant.

Fire Season, detail, by Amy Crook

Fire Season, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see the shadow of a bird, the soft texture of paper and glow of the sky, and the stark jut of burnt ruins wreathed in their own smoky residue. Below, this dramatic scene is contained safely in a frame, just waiting to grace your wall.

Fire Season, framed art by Amy Crook

Fire Season, framed art by Amy Crook

Categories: Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books
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The Things in the Mirror

Tuesday, November 5th, 2019

an ink and watercolor painting of purple tentacles slithering inside a gold-framed mirror

The Things in the Mirror, 5″x7″ ink and watercolor on paper

Every year, we reread A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, and I’m always inspired by the story and its amazing illustrations.

This year we have the Things in the Mirror, the slitherers whose main property is, apparently, to be sticky. The grey-on-grey ink wash background suggests an otherworldly space, while the mirror itself is bright with color and shining with gold.

It begs the question, what exactly is the most real space, in or outside of the mirror, and who is actually occupying it?

The Things in the Mirror, detail, by Amy Crook

The Things in the Mirror, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see the metallic sheen of gold watercolor and the loose curl of a couple of tentacles up close and personal. Below, the slitherers have been further contained by a picture frame.

The Things in the Mirror, framed art by Amy Crook

The Things in the Mirror, framed art by Amy Crook

Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Floating Gallery, Series and Books, Tentacles, Things I'm a Fan Of, Whimsical and Strange
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Ash Ghost series

Monday, November 4th, 2019

a series of 4 ink wash paintings featuring a ghost dissolving into ash by Amy Crook

Ash, Overgrown, Legend, and Ancient, ink wash art in the Ash Ghost series by Amy Crook,
4 works, 5″x7″ ink wash on paper

This series was painted, and named, after prompts from Inktober 2019.

The upper left’s eerie ghost is the first of the Ash Ghost series: 4 ink wash paintings featuring the same mysterious and yet-unwritten legend. They get progressively more complex, filling up the space, drawing you into their story, but Ash is stark and simple.

The upper right, Overgrown, has the footsteps but no ghost that you can see. They lead up to a series of steps between two overgrown pieces of wall, vines obscuring even that hint of what used to be there. A few bits of charred wood stick up in memory of a doorframe, but the rest of the structure is lost to the mists of time.

There’s a tale waiting to be told in these images. Small details waiting to be teased out and put down, more pictures yet to come. It keeps pulling us in, luring us closer.

In Legend, the graveyard is full of mist, trees vanishing in the distance and yet, somehow, the ghost is as vivid as ever. Nothing can hide him from you, neither space nor fog, but then again, perhaps nothing can hide you from him, either.

The lower right, Ancient, is the end of our ghost story so far. It features a single ash-blackened handprint obscuring the details on a cracked headstone.

There are more questions than answers left, of course. Who is the ghost? How long has he wandered and where is he going? The headstone is there, but where is his head?

And most importantly: what does he want with you, dear reader?

Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, People, Figures and Faces, Series and Books, Zombies, Skulls, and Other Morbid Things
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Hammer of the Gods

Sunday, September 8th, 2019

Hammer of the Gods by Amy Crook, an abstract watercolor of shiny lightning against blue stormclouds

Hammer of the Gods, 5″x7″ watercolor on paper

Thor’s third movie really changed things for him as a character, and this art calls up the cinematic moment when he and his lightning come crashing down on his enemies to the tune of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” — which is also the source of the title.

The spreading tendrils of lightning at the bottom all but vanish until you tilt the page to the sun, and then it all lights up just like crashing down from the heavens.

Thunder not included.

Hammer of the Gods, detail, by Amy Crook

Hammer of the Gods, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see the bright shine of abstract lightning against the low-hanging clouds, forking out before it strikes the ground. Below, the power is contained in a frame, but for how long?

Hammer of the Gods, framed art by Amy Crook

Hammer of the Gods, framed art by Amy Crook

Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of
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It’s Not Easy Being Green

Saturday, September 7th, 2019

It’s Not Easy Being Green by Amy Crook, abstract watercolor of green bleeding into purple

It’s Not Easy Being Green, 5″x7″ watercolor on paper

And now the strongest of the original Avengers — the Hulk!

I still remember watching the Lou Ferrigno show, and seeing him in Saturday morning cartoons as well. The colors here are, again, the comics palette, because there’s a part of me that will always think of those ridiculous purple pants against painted-green skin.

This painting is, of course, titled after a Muppet’s signature song, but I think it embodies the Bruce Banner experience pretty well — it’s not easy having this issue, green bleeding into and taking over the calmer colors of everyday life.

It’s Not Easy Being Green, detail, by Amy Crook

It’s Not Easy Being Green, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see a close-up of the Hulk green bleeding out and subsuming the purple of Bruce Banner’s favorite pants. Below, the painting is in a frame, calm as it can be and definitely not going to break out.

It’s Not Easy Being Green, framed art by Amy Crook

It’s Not Easy Being Green, framed art by Amy Crook

Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of
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